BREAKING NEWS: Design

This “3D” Interior Design Rule Makes Small Spaces Feel Spacious

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 14:30:00 +0000

It all has to do with cleverly disguising clutter. READ MORE...

I Asked a Pro Organizer to Help Pack My Carry-On

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 12:30:00 +0000

She got it so organized. READ MORE...

Dated ’80s Oak Cabinets Get a Calming New Color Palette

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 18:00:00 +0000

It made me totally rethink white cabinetry. READ MORE...

These Beautiful Ceramic Planters Take Up Zero Floor Space (and Even Work Outdoors)

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 16:45:00 +0000

I want them in both colors and sizes! READ MORE...

The “Sinful” Mistake Even Designers Make in Kitchens

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 15:45:00 +0000

And in bathrooms, too! READ MORE...

I’m a Hot Sleeper, and This Viral Pillow Is the Coolest Thing Ever

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 13:30:00 +0000

It’s so cooling and comfortable. READ MORE...

IKEA Is Selling an Incredibly Comfortable Sectional That’s Totally Kid-Friendly

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 13:00:00 +0000

The IKEA KIVIK sectional can withstand jumping kids. READ MORE...

I Learned This Organizing Trick from a Hotel Housekeeper, and It’s So Clever

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 12:30:00 +0000

I can’t believe I just learned about this. READ MORE...

‘I am very motivated by frustration’: A Yale creativity expert on how to turn your ideas into action

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 10:00:00 +0000

When scientist Zorana Ivcevic Pringle first started out in academia as an undergraduate student, she wanted “to study interesting people.” Unfortunately, that’s not a scientific term, and it carries with it a value judgement (also unscientific, as fun as it sounds). “I started being interested in describing what creative people are like, and understanding that complexity in a creative personality,” she says. “They seem to embody these dichotomies, things that oftentimes don’t go together in most people. It grabs your attention to something really important.”

She frames creativity in her research around strength and vulnerabilities, particularly engaged in how both personality and processes feed a creative act or idea: “How do you approach it when you have an idea? What happens with it? I became interested in what I ended up calling the process of self-regulation in creativity. And that is, how do you make yourself do it?”

Now, on the heels of launching her book The Creativity Choice (May 2025), Pringle, who is a senior research scientist at the Yale School of Medicine’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, admits she was onto something, and that dichotomy she senses about creativity is endlessly inspiring and interesting, across disciplines, everywhere. “I wanted to study people who are complex, who are doing things that are different, and who are pushing boundaries of what is possible.” The body of work she’s cultivated in more than two decades of researching creative individuals and their processes is both incredibly layered and also fundamentally pedestrian. We all can relate to it, even if we don’t have the last name of Bezos, Einstein, or Monet.

Creativity has a lot of fun in it. We don’t talk enough about it, but it also has times that are very hard—I mean, excruciatingly hard. We encounter obstacles, as a rule. Nothing you ever try works out. That’s disappointing, frustrating, overwhelming. That can be stressful. We have to deal with that and on some level accept it will happen. We have to have comfort that we can handle it somehow. I became fascinated by that.

I am very motivated by frustration. I work from the world of science. A gap, a question, something that’s missing. I find it frustrating: Why hasn’t this been asked? And then I want to ask it and work on it. I want to see how you can start answering it. That process of okay you have an idea but what are you going to do to make it real is fascinating.

I sometimes start my talks with a New Yorker cartoon that shows a cocktail party. An Upper East Side-ish cocktail party. There’s a group of people and someone says, “Do you know it is Harry who invented the daiquiri? He just never did anything with it.” We chuckle because we have an understanding and a recognition of Harrys in real life—people who have ideas but don’t do anything with it. We don’t always follow up on all of our ideas. There are reasons why people might not follow up on ideas. Oftentimes, the pictures of the creative process in the popular media are either limiting or more unintentionally discouraging.

I love the picture book What Do You Do with an Idea? By Kobi Yamada. It’s one of those rare things that’s actually true to the creative process. That book is showing, “Okay, I don’t know what to do with it. I’m just going to ignore it.” And then it stays there, then you start on it. Okay, now you’re starting to nurture it, and then it starts growing with you. It is truly a stunning book. It is wonderful to see those kinds of portrayals in the popular media, but those are rare.

There are barriers that we have to get over, that are psychological in nature. The sense of risk and discomfort associated with creativity, wondering whether we have confidence. I have done a study where I wanted to see what goes on in people’s minds—the psychological experience—when they were considering whether to share ideas. And I found three strands of thinking: One is outwardly oriented. It is asking, well, what are people going to say about it? Are they going to find it silly? Are they going to think it’s stepping on someone’s toes? Is somebody going to be angered—gatekeepers, stakeholders, supervisors; angering them is not the best idea. These are real considerations, and we shouldn’t take them lightly. Another kind of consideration is more inward-oriented. And that one is, well, this is making me self-conscious. This is making me anxious, that personal discovery. And then the third consideration is completely different, and it’s saying this creative work, this trying to do something new, something original—but effective and making a difference—is important to who I am as a person. It’s almost not a choice. You are making a choice, but it’s like involuntary because it’s just an expression of who you are. How you answer these outward and inward considerations is going to determine whether you start or not.

Sometimes I hear people say, “Oh, you have to get comfortable with risk. You have to get comfortable with this discomfort. You have to be fearless.” I’m like, “No, you do not.” If that was the case, I would never have done anything. I came across this quote from Georgia O’Keefe and she said something like, “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life—and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.” I am not fearless, and I am not comfortable. And so if that desire and that sense of identity and the importance of creative work is there, it is possible to embark on it and do it, even if you are not comfortable. We’re just accepting the discomfort, to start the process. That is truly empowering. Those messages, you have to find the fearless in you—what if you can’t? Does that mean you cannot be creative? It implies it. It is not the case.

I don’t think that you are born a fully creative person. It is true that for some people, some things that are important for creativity may come easier than for others. That does not mean that those for whom it doesn’t come all super easy cannot learn. We have wonderful evidence that creativity skills can be learned. We are starting to accumulate evidence that attitudes and mindsets relevant to creativity can also be learned. So all of these different pieces of the puzzle that is creativity can be learned. There is a whole constellation of things we need to be creative to the maximum the potential.

For the book, I interviewed the founder of Pinterest, Ben Silbermann. I really loved that interview because he had this unusual level of awareness and insight about the nature of the creative process, and in particular, the importance of the social side of it. He provided this really vivid example: When you are thinking of starting a company and you happen to be in the Bay Area, at the parties you go to, people discuss starting companies; at the bars you go to, people discuss starting companies. We don’t talk enough about that. We focus on individuals with great ideas. Sure that’s important, but they are not coming out of a vacuum. There are reasons there are hubs where particular kinds of things tend to happen. Creativity is social, even when it does not seem like it.

There is a big list of misconceptions on creativity. When I speak to my son, I say to him, if there is one thing, only one thing that you are going to learn from me about creativity, it is that first ideas are usually almost as a rule, not the most creative. And that seems to be, I have learned, counterintuitive to people. That’s because of the misconceptions about creativity that we have, that it is something that comes to you when you feel creative. We attach the word feeling to creativity because of how we were conditioned to think about it. But it is not a feeling. And because of this idea that it just comes over us that it’s not the result of purposeful thinking and work, we have this impression that the first thing that comes to mind has to be the most creative. But we can easily demonstrate that it’s not the case.

There is a disproportionate association of creativity and genius. And it has very negative consequences. If we say the word creativity, we immediately think of Einstein, Monet, and Steve Jobs, then we look at ourselves and say, “Well, I am not that, because most of us are not that.” If you say you are not that, which chances are you are not, then it is logical to think that there’s something special about them. That they were born with it. And if they are born with it and you are not, then there’s nothing much you can do. So why even try? And often in educational settings, we are trying to encourage and empower young people by putting forth these examples. But the exact opposite can happen.

Some say that creativity is the highest when we have full freedom of action: no constraints, everything goes, but creativity is not about full freedom. Your mind has to start somewhere. And the way the mind works, it starts with what is familiar. What is familiar is something you’ve done previously. If you’ve done it previously it can’t be original, by definition. Intuitively, it seems that creativity is this free floating, spontaneous thing. But no, not even for artists, who are the most stereotypically creative. Let’s look at that in the artistic practice: I am only going to use these materials. I’m only going to use this method for a particular thing.

Those are constraints.

Recognizing that the creative block does not mean that I am not capable. I can more easily say, “Okay, here are some things I can do about it to make it as short as possible.” I was using all of the strategies in the book, personally in the process of writing it, and I remember, vividly, getting stuck on a chapter about getting stuck. I stared at it, and I stared at it, and just was not going anywhere. And I said, well, I have to look at it in a different way. And I knew that each of the pieces I had felt right, but they were just not flowing. I printed my chapter draft that was not working and I cut it up and physically pasted different sections and then sat on the ground and arranged them in different ways. You can take different bits and pieces of a problem and start arranging them either symbolically or physically or in different ways to see what’s going to start clicking to create a full picture.

Minimalist Black-Wood Retreat in Austria

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 09:14:26 +0000

Located on the shores of Lake Attersee, House F by bogenfeld Architektur blends simplicity and function with striking clarity. The two-story home is designed with a narrow, elongated footprint to preserve garden space while maximizing views from both floors.

On the exterior, the black-stained timber cladding and pitched roof take cues from traditional boathouses nearby. Inside, the space is intentionally reduced to essentials: light wood, smooth concrete, and slim steel columns. Expansive glass walls on the ground floor open fully to the garden, creating a seamless indoor-outdoor transition.

The layout shifts vertically. The ground floor faces the private yard, while the upper floor opens toward the lake and surrounding mountains. This orientation turns the upper living area into a scenic observatory, offering tranquil views of the harbor and distant peaks.

Although the plot is compact, the architecture uses every meter wisely. The result is a serene, restrained home that feels both connected to nature and rooted in regional identity.

Photographs:Violetta Wakolbinger

The post Minimalist Black-Wood Retreat in Austria appeared first on Homedit.

This Backyard Goes from Rodent-Ridden to a Dreamy Garden Retreat

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 22:00:00 +0000

Pavers, pea gravel, patio furniture, and potted plants to the rescue! READ MORE...

3 Things I Always Buy at T.J. Maxx & 3 Things I Always Buy at Marshalls

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 18:30:00 +0000

Use my tricks of the trade. READ MORE...

This 1942 Texas Home Is Called the "Mullet House"

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 16:00:00 +0000

There are so many beautiful couches (and boots!) in this home. READ MORE...

How Designers Transform Living Rooms with Just $50

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 14:30:00 +0000

Tip number four is probably the LAST thing you’ll think to do. READ MORE...

I Wish Every Home Still Had This Forgotten 99-Year-Old Bathroom Feature

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 14:15:00 +0000

These had a short lifespan — but I'm obsessed. READ MORE...

My Mother-in-Law's Trick for Finding an Always Cool Home Is Brilliant

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 13:15:00 +0000

It makes so much sense. READ MORE...

This 5-Piece Patio Furniture Set Looks 5x The Price (It’s a Total Steal!)

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 12:45:00 +0000

Just add drinks and snacks — this set does the rest. READ MORE...

This Smart Find Protects My Grill All Year Long

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 12:30:00 +0000

It keeps my grill safe from all the elements. READ MORE...

Pop, soda, or coke? A look at the history behind the soft drink’s many names

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 10:00:00 +0000

With burgers sizzling and classic rock thumping, many Americans revel in summer cookouts—at least until that wayward cousin asks for a “pop” in soda country, or even worse, a “coke” when they actually want a Sprite.

Few American linguistic debates have bubbled quite as long and effervescently as the one over whether a generic soft drink should be called a soda, pop or coke.

The word you use generally boils down to where you’re from: Midwesterners enjoy a good pop, while soda is tops in the North and far West. Southerners, long the cultural mavericks, don’t bat an eyelash asking for coke—lowercase—before homing in on exactly the type they want: Perhaps a root beer or a Coke, uppercase.

As a linguist who studies American dialects, I’m less interested in this regional divide and far more fascinated by the unexpected history behind how a fizzy “health” drink from the early 1800s spawned the modern soft drink’s many names and iterations.

Bubbles, anyone?

Foods and drinks with wellness benefits might seem like a modern phenomenon, but the urge to create drinks with medicinal properties inspired what might be called a soda revolution in the 1800s.

The process of carbonating water was first discovered in the late 1700s. By the early 1800s, this carbonated water had become popular as a health drink and was often referred to as “soda water.” The word “soda” likely came from “sodium,” since these drinks often contained salts, which were then believed to have healing properties.

Given its alleged curative effects for health issues such as indigestion, pharmacists sold soda water at soda fountains, innovative devices that created carbonated water to be sold by the glass. A chemistry professor, Benjamin Stillman, set up the first such device in a drugstore in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1806. Its eventual success inspired a boom of soda fountains in drugstores and health spas.

By the mid-1800s, pharmacists were creating unique root-, fruit- and herb-infused concoctions, such as sassafras-based root beer, at their soda fountains, often marketing them as cures for everything from fatigue to foul moods.

These flavored, sweetened versions gave rise to the linking of the word “soda” with a sweetened carbonated beverage, as opposed to simple, carbonated water.

Seltzer—today’s popular term for such sparkling water—was around, too. But it was used only for the naturally carbonated mineral water from the German town Nieder-Selters. Unlike Perrier, sourced similarly from a specific spring in France, seltzer made the leap to becoming a generic term for fizzy water.

Regional naming patterns

So how did “soda” come to be called so many different things in different places?

It all stems from a mix of economic enterprise and linguistic ingenuity.

The popularity of “soda” in the Northeast likely reflects the soda fountain’s longer history in the region. Since a lot of Americans living in the Northeast migrated to California in the mid-to-late 1800s, the name likely traveled west with them.

As for the Midwestern preference for “pop”—well, the earliest American use of the term to refer to a sparkling beverage appeared in the 1840s in the name of a flavored version called “ginger pop.” Such ginger-flavored pop, though, was around in Britain by 1816, since a Newcastle songbook is where you can first see it used in text. The “pop” seems to be onomatopoeic for the noise made when the cork was released from the bottle before drinking.

Linguists don’t fully know why “pop” became so popular in the Midwest. But one theory links it to a Michigan bottling company, Feigenson Brothers Bottling Works—today known as Faygo Beverages—that used “pop” in the name of the sodas they marketed and sold. Another theory suggests that because bottles were more common in the region, soda drinkers were more likely to hear the “pop” sound than in the Northeast, where soda fountains reigned.

As for using coke generically, the first Coca-Cola was served in 1886 by Dr. John Pemberton, a pharmacist at Jacobs’ Pharmacy in Atlanta and the founder of the company. In the 1900s, the Coca-Cola company tried to stamp out the use of “Coke” for “Coca-Cola.” But that ship had already sailed. Since Coca-Cola originated and was overwhelmingly popular in the South, its generic use grew out of the fact that people almost always asked for “Coke.”

As with Jell-O, Kleenex, Band-Aids and seltzer, it became a generic term.

What’s soft about it?

Speaking of soft drinks, what’s up with that term?

It was originally used to distinguish all nonalcoholic drinks from “hard drinks,” or beverages containing spirits.

Interestingly, the original Coca-Cola formula included wine—resembling a type of alcoholic “health” drink popular overseas, Vin Mariani. But Pemberton went on to develop a “soft” version a few years later to be sold as a medicinal drink.

Due to the growing popularity of soda water concoctions, eventually “soft drink” came to mean only such sweetened carbonated beverages, a linguistic testament to America’s enduring love affair with sugar and bubbles.

With the average American guzzling almost 40 gallons per year, you can call it whatever you what. Just don’t call it healthy.

Valerie M. Fridland is a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada, Reno.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A Cliffside Home Where Concrete Speaks

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 06:11:01 +0000

Built into a steep hillside in Christchurch, New Zealand, the Scarborough Bêton Brut House by Young Architects integrates raw concrete construction with expansive ocean views. Designed to work with challenging geotechnical conditions, the home uses exposed concrete both structurally and aesthetically, with surfaces left unpainted and sealed in a matte finish.

The interior balances the cool strength of concrete with warmth and acoustic comfort, using cedar shiplap ceilings, black-stained oak panels, and polished charcoal floors. Frameless glass walls line the living and dining spaces, opening the interior to sweeping views across the coastline.

The house follows the slope, placing living areas along the view while routing circulation and utility spaces behind. A separate “Withdrawing Room” is tucked away from sunlight, offering an intentionally darker, more intimate retreat with a distinct texture and lighting scheme.

Privacy and solar control are achieved through careful glazing placement and clerestory windows that draw in morning light. The result is a home that feels both grounded and open, heavy and airy—fully rooted in its cliffside context.

Photographs:Lightforge

The post A Cliffside Home Where Concrete Speaks appeared first on Homedit.

These Aldi $10 Storage Gems Will Finally Tame Your Clutter

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 22:45:00 +0000

I'll take multiples, please. READ MORE...

This 2000s Bathroom Now Has a “Sultry Ralph Lauren Aesthetic

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 22:00:00 +0000

“Nothing about builder-grade finishes excited me,” the homeowner says. READ MORE...

Bentley modernized its logo without pulling ‘a Jaguar’

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 20:00:00 +0000

Bentley has updated its emblem for just the fifth time since its founding in 1919, and without breaking hard from 106 years of branding tradition, it still manages to be the most radical redesign in company history. A Jaguar-style rebrand this is not.

The British luxury automaker’s “Bentley Wings” logo features a chrome winged monogram of a white B (for founder Walter Owen Bentley’s last name) that’s inside a black oval. Originally designed by British automotive illustrator F. Gordon Crosby, updates were made in 1931, the 1990s, and 2002, according to the company, but the changes were small and subtle. A tweak in the angle of the wings here, changes to the decorative elements on the metallic seal there, but the form has stayed the same. The company’s latest redesign of its “Winged B” logo still keeps most of the basic elements in place, but it’s the sleekest, most minimalist version yet.

Designed in-house by a creative team led by Bentley director of design Robin Page and based on a concept by Young Nam, a member of the company’s interior design team, the new wings have been reshaped and abstracted with the feathers turned into a radial diamond design. The B mark, which Bentley calls the emblem’s center jewel, was redesigned to be able to stand on its own as a mark without wings, and the feathers below it were removed to look cleaner. The details, like a beveled glass edge, were inspired by luxury watch design.

[Photo: Bentley]

Look at Bentley’s logo evolve, and like a Transformer or Animorphs book cover, it slowly changes one frame at a time from bird to machine as the wings go from soft to sharp. Bentley says its new shape was inspired by the the angled wings of a peregrine falcon, but it also looks more high tech.

“The mission in designing the new emblem was to capture some of the beautiful details from the previous designs—for example, the diamond pattern of the inner wings and the B ‘centre jewel’—but create a more modern and progressive design,” the company said in a statement.

Their attempt at a modern and progressive rebrand stands in contrast to Jaguar, which retired its jaguar logo last year for a controversial all-lowercase sans-serif logo. Rather than build off the brand’s legacy and heritage like Bentley did, Jaguar started from scratch—and so far, it hasn’t paid off, as production, and thus sales, are down.

Still, the rebrands for both British luxury automakers are signs of a larger shift as companies adapt for a future that’s more electric. There’s an industry-wide trend toward lighter, rounder, simpler logos. Whereas car logos once resembled the physical car badges, brands like Audi, Toyota, and Volkswagen have in recent years flattened and de-chromed their logos.

For Bentley, the rebrand signals a new era. The company plans to debut its first fully electric vehicle next year and promised a new lineup of products to come. Next Tuesday, it will unveil a still-under-wraps concept car and new design studio at its headquarters in Crewe, England.

Reimagining a legacy brand for the future can be challenging, but Bentley’s finished product delivers on the mission it set out to accomplish. Without jettisoning the core visual elements of it’s long-running brand, designers found a way to make heritage look modern and new.

Core77 Weekly Roundup (6-30-25 to 7-3-25)

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 19:02:29 +0000

Here's what we looked at this week:

No, airlines are not installing these stand-up saddle-style seats. A design exercise has been turned into misinformation.

Obsessive UX design detail: Sugatsune's Slide Hook is a bag hook that retracts.

The Great Fredini figures out how to centrifugally mold glass.

Solstice 2.0, a kinetic clock by Animaro Design Studio.

Mobile shopping cart cleaning solutions from different countries. Unsurprisingly, the Dutch one is the craziest.

Saudi Arabia's Shebara Resort, a net-zero facility with stainless steel pod villas.

China moved an entire historical building complex using walking robots.

When EDC objects are actually designed by industrial designers.

The Acemate is a smart design for a robotic tennis partner.

The Nuki, a popular European smart lock, comes to America.

The Float Buddy, an emergency inflatable buoy for smartphones.

Industrial design firm Intenxiv created this Spinamic, a revolutionary scoliosis correction device.

Design lessons: How exploiting three materials made greenhouses affordable.

The ChompSaw: A benchtop power tool that's safe for kids to use.

Furniture design case study: Teknion on making the main conference table for the G7 Summit.

This ‘Elden Ring’ book costs nearly $300. Fans say it’s worth it

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 19:00:00 +0000

The $297 collector’s edition of Grace Given has shimmering gilded edges, a simulated white antique leather cover, lush full-color illustrations on heavy coated stock, and a flocked slipcase with extensive gold-foil detailing.

Such elaborate, ornate bookmaking is the purview of a handful of passionate and obsessive publishers—most notably among them The Folio Society. But whereas The Folio Society is known for its luxe editions of classic and contemporary works, Grace Given is, against all odds, about a video game.

Of course, it’s not just about any video game: it’s about the mythology of Elden Ring, FromSoftware’s 2022 Game of the Year winner. The game just crossed the $30 million mark in sales, putting it in the company of Call of Duty titles, Super Mario Odyssey, and Diablo III.

[Photo: Tune & Fairweather]

Video game books tend to be flimsy, mass-produced affairs. But publisher Jason Killingsworth believes in the staying power of FromSoftware’s cult-fave games, which launched the “Soulsborne” genre with titles like Demon’s Souls, Bloodborne and the Dark Souls series. So the Dublin-based creative launched a publishing company, Tune & Fairweather, that celebrates their rich worlds—and the obsessive fan bases they command. Five years in, he says the enterprise has crossed the €10 million ($11.7 million USD) mark, and made around €3.5 million ($4.1 million USD) last year alone. In the process, Tune & Fairweather’s books are perhaps doing something else via their elaborate form factors: elevating the art form of video games at large. And the runaway success of Elden Ring gave them an opportunity to take it all to an unprecedented level, creating perhaps the most opulent video game book ever made.

“You’re hoping for that project that’s just going to let you throw everything you’ve ever learned [at something], use every tool in the toolbelt—and Grace Given just seemed like the perfect project to take that kitchen-sink approach,” Killingsworth says.

[Photo: Tune & Fairweather]

LEVELING UP

Killingsworth was born in Ireland to Christian missionaries, but found himself drawn to the demons of scripture over the angels; he just saw them as more textured and interesting. He also loved role-playing video games, so after working as an editor at Paste in its heyday (where he launched its video game coverage), he got a gig at the U.K.-based game magazine Edge, where he discovered Demon’s Souls. He was entranced by FromSoftware’s strange immersive worlds where every detail felt considered and intentional, and went further down the rabbit hole—eventually writing a book about Dark Souls in 2016 with video game journalist Keza MacDonald, dubbed You Died. Named after the screen that pops up in the notoriously difficult Soulsborne titles when you, well, die (a lot), the book explored the game from a variety of angles, from its creation to the psychology behind its popularity to its fandom (which includes director Alex Garland).

The thing was, the book was released by a small publisher, “and I had been cajoling and sort of begging them to do this really exalted fetish object of a book that I knew that Souls fans would revel in—and it just wasn’t what they wanted to make,” Killingsworth says.

So they released the book at a low price (and the production specs to match), and that was that. Until it wasn’t, when Killingsworth bought the hardcover rights to the project.

“There was this unfinished quest line with You Died, where there was an ideal version of that book in my mind that hadn’t been created, and it was still sitting in there like a little splinter,” he says.

He formally launched Tune & Fairweather in 2019 when he announced a Kickstarter campaign for an updated, expanded, and, most importantly, richly produced volume, from the art to the paper stock and the hardcover bindings (one tier even involved an etched pine “coffin” box for the book at $347).

[Photo: Tune & Fairweather]

Because of their high level of difficulty, FromSoftware games can be a punishing experience for casual gamers who are not expecting to die dozens upon dozens of times before learning the right moves to conquer a given foe. As such, they are polarizing—and they yield either enraged naysayers, or rabid obsessives. Would the latter be willing to support the ultimate book tie-in, not to mention the price it would command?

“I had a really strong, strong hunch,” Killingsworth says. Gaming is, after all, a largely intangible experience—and when you have a physical object that deepens that experience, not unlike music fandom and a vinyl record box set, you might have exactly what a devoted fan would want. And Killingsworth would know. It’s what he wanted. “I just knew that video game fans were some of the most collector-minded audiences on the planet,” he says.

Moreover, with Kickstarter, there really was no risk in probing the concept (save embarrassment, he notes with a laugh). It went on to provide compelling proof of concept when it made €126,346 on a €50,000 goal. But the true watershed moment came when Tune & Fairweather Kickstarted Soul Arts in 2021, a book featuring a range of work from YouTuber Michael “VaatiVidya” Samuels’ Soulsborne fan art competitions. It was funded in one hour, and made $2.15 million on a $58,880 goal.

At the time, Killingsworth had been laid off from Riot Games, where he had been working, and was coasting on (the last of) his severance. The Kickstarter came at a critical moment: “It really was those first minutes of the Soul Arts campaign where I had the realization that I was going to be able to do Tune & Fairweather full-time,” he says.

(Curious about the IP legalities of all this? Killingsworth notes that FromSoftware doesn’t interfere, and similar to fans who make YouTube videos about the company’s games, Tune & Fairweather is essentially doing the same thing in print, providing original analysis and art.)

[Photo: Tune & Fairweather]

A DESIGN FREE-FOR-ALL

The publisher has since scaled up to making three to four books a year, and moved from Kickstarter to an internal sales system. It’s worth noting that not all of its output is Soulsborne books. While those remain Tune & Fairweather’s bread and butter, they allow Killingsworth the space to explore other projects, like this year’s typographic/visual novel Process.

Its most ambitious book so far is Grace Given: The Mythology of Elden Ring. When it came to the production, Killingsworth drew inspiration from a few critical places—notably Italy, where all of Tune & Fairweather’s books are printed. When he ventures over for each production run, he tacks on a few days for exploration—and that can be immediately seen on the cover, which was designed by Elliott Wells (whose double gatefold also dominates the middle of the book). The debossed demigod faces that frame the cover echo, say, the carvings in the Golden Staircase of the Doge’s Palace in Venice. The weathered marble throughout Italy finds its way into the faux antique white leather, and the gilded edges are synonymous with so much ornamentation in the country.

Another key influence is the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, and its permanent Arts of the Book exhibit featuring elaborate tomes of the ancient world, where Killingsworth often finds inspiration, as in the case of the overall color palette or the fabric spine labels that made their way to Grace Given.

Ultimately, “We used almost every design technique that you could think of,” Killingsworth says. “It was just an absolute free-for-all. It was so fun and so indulgent.”

The book showcases more than 20 illustrations by the popular artist Shimhaq and more than 100 spot illustrations by MenasLG—both regarded for their takes on the genre. The core text detailing Elden Ring’s mythology, meanwhile, comes from Geoff “SmoughTown” Truscott, who maintains a popular YouTube channel where he explores game lore.

[Photo: Tune & Fairweather]

Tune & Fairweather printed 5,000 copies of the collector’s edition, which have been shipping, and Killingsworth says they’re nearly sold out. While the collector’s edition is limited to just one run, a $144 deluxe edition with downgraded (but still impressive) specs is on its way in the coming months, as is a $42 softcover.

Like the games that Killingsworth documents, the high-tier pricing can polarize—and he has weathered his share of commenters online who aren’t thrilled about it.

“It’s just such an expensive enterprise. Never mind the price of the materials and the production costs, which themselves are eye-watering,” he says. “I just made a conscious decision that even if there was some blowback, I felt like I had built up enough trust with our audience where I could say, ‘Trust me. I will make this worth your while.’”

And hey, when it comes to that price tag, if there’s one group that’s used to really grinding for what they want, it’s a Souls fan.

Here’s Why It’s Always Worth Shopping at This Legacy Furniture Brand

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 19:00:00 +0000

After nearly 80 years, it’s never let us down. READ MORE...

My Grandma Says This Is the One Thing Your Bathroom Is Missing

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 18:30:00 +0000

Hear us out: Your bathroom needs a conversation starter. READ MORE...

The ChompSaw: A Benchtop Power Tool That's Safe for Kids to Use

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 16:01:56 +0000

Of all freestanding power tools, perhaps the jigsaw or scrollsaw would be the most fun for kids to use, as they allow freeform cuts. They're also pretty darn dangerous, with the jigsaw being powerful enough to remove fingers.

A much safer way to introduce kids to power tools is this ChompSaw, developed by product designers Kausi Raman and Max Liechty. The material it's designed to cut is cardboard, allowing parents to turn Amazon boxes into projects.

The tool is essentially a nibbler, using an oscillating cutter that's safely tucked beneath a puck-like protrusion, completely preventing finger contact.

The nibblings are collected in a bin below, allowing you to recycle the waste.

The ChompSaw runs $250.

Furniture Design Case Study: Making the Table for the G7 Summit

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 16:01:55 +0000

The G7 Summit is a big deal, and needed a big deal of a conference table. The Canadian government, this year's host, turned to Toronto-based furniture brand Teknion to create the flagship table for the conference's primary Outreach room.

Initial Table Concept

Commissioned by the Canadian government, the initial design for a table featured a large single base and a Starburst veneer pattern. The base was later changed from one large base to two, which significantly improved the aesthetic.

Reconfigurable Table Design

The table was developed to have eight sections, each with a supporting top and base, allowing for adjustable sizing. The table also includes a removable platform on top, with fully finished veneer underneath and matched veneer data ports.

Table's Purpose, Reconfigurability and Location

While the reconfigurable table was designed for the Outreach room at the G7 summit, the ask was for it to be able to be broken down into a few smaller sizes and relocated to Ottawa for Prime Minister Mark Carney's use outside of the summit. Teknion went beyond the ask and gave many more possible variations due to the 8 sections. The two curved end pieces can also be detached from the segments and made into a much smaller circular table.

Veneer Sourcing Challenge

Finding a Canadian oak log for the veneer proved difficult, as maple is more common, but the client, the Summit Management Team, desired oak for its character, origin, and beauty.

Red Oak is much more common in Canada, and traditionally, for projects like this, Teknion's Solutions team prefers to use veneer sourced from one tree. In this instance, due to the size of the table, the team used 2 logs of the Canadian White Oak they were able to source from Southwestern Ontario in the Algonquin Park region, which they were able to stain and match seamlessly with careful planning.

Starburst Veneer Process

The creation of the Starburst veneer pattern involved careful layout and pressing, an intricate and risky process with high potential for mistakes during pressing.

Oak Stitching Quality

The finishing shop achieved exceptional stitching on the oak veneer, avoiding the need for significant fill, which was a concern given the challenging nature of working with oak in a Starburst pattern.

Electrical Accessibility Design

The table was intentionally designed without pre-installed power and data to accommodate current and future technologies, emphasizing the universal and agnostic nature of the table's infrastructure.

Power Data Port Design

The power and data ports were designed with matched veneer and a lift-off mechanism for access, maintaining the table's aesthetic appeal in both configurations with and without the top plinth.

Plinth Functionality

The platform or plinth on top of the table is primarily an aesthetic option to conceal cords from technology, rather than housing any tech itself in anticipation of a variety of tech options potentially being used within the table for the summit and after.

"Magic Wand" Story

The Summit Management Team had a literal 'magic wand' and swore by it as a symbol providing them good luck for the different elements of the project they came across. They credited some of the magic of the wand to finding the hard-to-come-by Canadian log for the table, leading to a shop member making a similar wand for Susan Hahn, General Manager of the Teknion Solutions team.

Congratulations to Teknion. That's one hell of a commission!

Design Lessons: How Exploiting Three Materials Made Greenhouses Affordable

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 13:36:52 +0000

Greenhouses are an excellent way to grow food in a controlled environment. By regulating environmental factors and blocking out pests, vegetable yields are increased significantly. But traditional greenhouses, made with rigid materials and glass, are expensive. You can expect to spend tens of thousands on greenhouses like these:

In the 1960s, polyethylene film in wide sheets became available. This set off a revolution in greenhouse design—particularly in the area of cost.

An unknown inventor figured out it was way cheaper to use inexpensive and easily bendable tubing, like PVC pipe, to build a skeletal Quonset hut. This could then be wrapped in the polyethylene film.

Compared to glass, polyethylene film is cheaper up front, easier to install, and cheaper to replace. These two innovations—the film and the "hoop house" design—made greenhouses affordable for the masses.

Not all hoop houses were made with PVC, with some preferring metal conduit. But the design is the same, regardless of the tubing type: Bent tubing for a row of hoops, and straight tubing run longitudinally to serve as purlins. This ingenious shape is sturdy, offers a measure of wind resistance and is highly economical.

The next issue that saw refinement was the connection method between the hoops and the purlins. The earliest builders simply drilled holes through both, and connected them with a carriage bolt. This proved to be laborious, requiring skilled accuracy to drill the holes. It was also cumbersome, in an era when drills still needed to be plugged into something.

Crafty builders turned to plumbing supply stores to use pipe clamps instead. These eventually morphed into purpose-designed cross connectors like these:

Those were an improvement over the drill-and-carriage-bolt method; if you made a mistake in placement, you could simply slide the connector to the correct location and re-tighten it. But there was room for improvement yet, as these connectors required the installer to use tools.

That improvement came in the form of these wire hoop-to-purlin connectors. They're pure form-follows-function, can be slid around easily for positioning, and can be installed without the use of tools. They're also cheap as chips.

These examples of the exploitation of material properties—for the polyethylene film, the PVC tubing and the wire clips—ought be taught to all industrial design students. These innovations reduced cost, increased access, eased installation, and used less material than earlier solutions. Design at its finest.

Denmark wants you to copyright yourself. It might be the only way to stop deepfakes

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 10:00:00 +0000

“Human beings can be run through the digital copy machine and be misused for all sorts of purposes and I’m not willing to accept that,” Danish Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt recently told The Guardian after Denmark introduced an amendment to its copyright legislation so people could own their own likeness. “In the bill we agree and are sending an unequivocal message that everybody has the right to their own body, their own voice, and their own facial features, which is apparently not how the current law is protecting people against generative AI.”

The Danish culture minister is right. We need to stop this problem decisively. Deepfakes are a serious problem—one that is fundamentally altering our perception of reality. People are getting bullied, coerced into doing things against their will, and even framed for crimes they didn’t commit. Stopping the software will not work. That ship sailed a long time ago. And normal people don’t have the resources to fight in court for a deepfake to be taken down.

The answer, like the Danish government has done, is to include personal likeness in copyright law. The proposal establishes legal definitions for unauthorized digital reproductions, specifically targeting “very realistic digital representation of a person, including their appearance and voice.” The Danish administration intends to introduce the legislative proposal for public input ahead of the summer parliamentary break, with formal submission planned for autumn.

Under the revised copyright framework, Danish citizens would gain legal authority to request removal of nonconsensual deepfake content from digital platforms. The legislation extends protection to cover unauthorized artificial recreations of artistic performances, with potential financial remedies for victims. Creative works such as parody and satirical content remain exempt from these restrictions.

“Of course this is new ground we are breaking, and if the platforms are not complying with that, we are willing to take additional steps,” Engel-Schmidt said. Digital platforms that fail to comply face substantial financial penalties, with potential escalation to European Commission oversight. “That is why I believe the tech platforms will take this very seriously indeed,” the minister added. Denmark plans to leverage its upcoming EU presidency to promote similar legislative approaches across European nations.

Fix copyright to fix the deepfake problem

If imposing heavy penalties on any social network or video service that hosts a copyrighted work sounds familiar, that’s because it is how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) works in the United States. Under U.S. copyright law and similar systems globally, copyright protection is granted exclusively to original creative works fixed in a tangible form, such as writings, music, artwork, software, films, or photographs. Crucially, copyright law explicitly excludes protection for abstract concepts like ideas, facts, systems, methods, or short phrases, which may fall under trademark law but can’t be copyrighted. Most importantly, it does not extend to fundamental aspects of an individual’s identity, including their likeness, voice, or persona.

Copyright protects specific, authored expressions—like a particular photograph of you or a recording of your voice singing a song—but not the underlying person. Your face, body, or general identity can be reproduced, although there are rights concerning the commercial or personal use of one’s likeness, voice, or identity. They are addressed by separate legal doctrines, primarily the right of publicity and the right to privacy.

The problem is that, to fight someone from using your likeness under that framework, you will need a lot of power and money. Someone like Scarlett Johansson could take down OpenAI’s version of her voice because it sounded too much like her with a simple tweet and the threat of litigation. Likewise, the lawyers of famous people like President Obama or footballer Christiano Ronaldo can strike down any unsanctioned use of their likeness.

“If Ronaldo complains about a deepfake video of him, a platform will take the video down,” Metaphysic CEO Tom Graham told me in an interview last year talking about his company’s efforts to copyright anonymous people’s likeness. “But if Joe Schmoe complains about his right of publicity or privacy, the platform will shrug. Unless Mr. Schmoe fires a DMCA complaint, that is. Then YouTube will take down the deepfake instantly, because not complying with a DMCA takedown notice will have serious consequences for YouTube that could reach millions of dollars.”

Graham has been trying to fix this issue for a while. Metaphysic was the company that made deepfake Tom Cruise viral and then went on to work with iconic “brands” like ABBA, Tom Hanks, and Elvis himself, to make legal digital clones for use in concerts, movies, and TV. The last time I spoke with him, his company was working on a pioneering system that allowed famous people and individuals to register the copyright of AI-generated versions of themselves.

“Copyright law says that you can’t copyright anything other than works of human authorship,” Graham explains. “So, you can’t copyright yourself because you are from nature, right? You are not a work of human authorship.” But what if you could use AI to create a digital self and copyright that? That will effectively give you right over any digital representation of yourself, potentially putting you under DMCA protection without the Danish copyright patch.

“What we’re doing here is we are creating the AI character of you. So, just like Disney can own Mickey Mouse and the Avatar characters, you can own the character that happens to look exactly, perfectly like you,” he told me. The process involves creating an AI-generated avatar from user-provided video, which becomes a copyrightable work because it’s technically an artificial creation, even though it looks identical to the real person.

“If somebody takes a video of you in real life, you don’t have any claim. But if someone makes a character that looks just like you, that looks exactly like your character, then we are trying to say that that unauthorized character infringes your character,” Graham described. “So, you’re not copywriting yourself. You’re copywriting this AI character of yourself.”

In theory, this would give people instant practical enforcement benefits. Under current takedown procedures, when someone with registered copyright complains about infringing content, platforms must remove it within 24 hours. “That’s the remedy. That’s the thing you’re looking to do,” Graham says. For deepfake victims, this creates a powerful tool.

He already submitted his own AI likeness for copyright registration with the U.S. Copyright Office, though he’s still awaiting a decision. The process was designed specifically to address recent Copyright Office decisions that denied protection for AI-generated images from tools like Midjourney, which were deemed to lack sufficient human authorship. “We designed this system to embed that human control and authorship into every layer of the process. Just the same as if you were using Photoshop to design a new character,” Graham explains. The system requires users to manually curate their video data and select specific frames, creating what Graham argues is sufficient human involvement to qualify for copyright protection.

If that sounds convoluted to you, you are not wrong. Denmark’s legislative approach offers a more direct path than the complex workarounds required in countries like the United States. By explicitly granting individuals rights over their digital likeness, the Danish law could provide the legal foundation needed to effectively combat deepfake abuse. Whether the European Union follows Denmark’s lead may determine how quickly this new form of digital rights protection spreads across the world, hopefully changing the mind of U.S. legislators in the process.

The secret to good public policy is simplicity

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

“Plan for traffic jams, get traffic jams. Plan for human flourishing, get human flourishing.”

That’s not just some cheesy urbanism mantra, it’s behavioral science.

Human behavior is often just following the path of least resistance. Not necessarily because we’re lazy, but because our brains are wired to conserve effort. Psychologists will tell you that the more friction we encounter (physical, mental, or procedural) the less likely we are to continue the thing we’re doing.

The fox and the grapes

Aesop’s fable The Fox and the Grapes is a parable about decision-making. The fox can’t reach the grapes that are way up high on the vine, so he figures they must not be ripe. It’s where we get the phrase “sour grapes” to describe how someone rationalizes their poor reasoning. I came across a research study that applied Aesop’s fable.

Fifty-two participants judged the direction of moving dots on a screen by using handles in either hand. When researchers subtly increased resistance in one handle, participants unconsciously altered their judgments to favor the easier action. For example, adding resistance to the left handle made participants more likely to perceive the dots moving to the right, since moving the right handle was easier.

“Our brain tricks us into believing the low-hanging fruit really is the ripest,” neuroscience researcher Dr. Nobuhiro Hagura said. “We found that not only does the cost to act influence people’s behavior, but it even changes what we think we see.”

Dr. Hagura’s team found that bias occurred without participants realizing that one response required more effort. In other words, their brains recalibrated what felt right based on ease, not accuracy.

Unconscious decisions

People don’t read zoning ordinances. They don’t memorize bus schedules. They don’t have a photographic memory of where to find bike lanes. They don’t make pro/con lists before deciding whether to walk to the store or drive. Most daily decisions are unconscious. So if local government leaders want people to choose healthy, sustainable, socially beneficial behaviors, those behaviors have got to be the easiest ones to choose.

Unfortunately, most American towns and cities are built the opposite way. Walking your child to school often means dodging traffic, climbing over curbs, and waiting at unshaded intersections with no bench in sight. Riding a bike might mean taking a lane next to speeding trucks. Taking transit might mean waiting in the mud with no sidewalk or shelter. But hopping in a car? That’s easy. We’ve paved a deadly path of least resistance.

What’s doable, but requires some up-front energy by the expert planners and engineers, is to make safe and healthy choices as simple and intuitive by creating a system that nudges you in the right direction.

Organizing principles

Entrepreneurs often cite their one-line hook for a product or service as the key to staying focused. Urban planners, policy writers, and elected officials should steal this tactic. Every transportation plan, housing study, parking reform, or downtown revitalization effort could begin with a one-sentence purpose that’s clear, memorable, and anchored in human flourishing. That sentence becomes your compass when debate veers off course. For example:

Our streets will be safe for 8-year-olds riding bicycles.
We will eliminate policies that interfere with abundant housing.
Cars are welcome on our streets, but they will move slowly.
Townhouses should be legal in every neighborhood.
Our residents should not be forced to drive to get around.
Housing people is more important than housing cars.
The bus should not be stuck in traffic.

These types of one-liners can be organizing principles, which is more powerful than empty slogans. If the plan, ordinance, or capital project doesn’t help achieve the one-sentence purpose, it’s off-mission. If it conflicts, it should be stopped.

People choose what’s easy, so make good urbanism easy. Make it the path of least resistance.

A-Frame Architecture Reimagined with Glass and Geometry

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 07:00:17 +0000

VA House by Sebastian David Büscher rises from the hills of Weiler, Austria with a dramatic angular silhouette. Its sharply folded A-frame roof commands attention, wrapped in silver fir cladding that mimics the linear striations of the surrounding alpine terrain.

This sculptural roof isn’t just a nod to regional forms, it defines the architecture, guiding both light and spatial flow.

At the gabled ends, full-height glass façade windows open the home to panoramic mountain views, blurring the boundary between structure and landscape. These triangular glazed sections act as visual anchors, framing the horizon and flooding the interiors with daylight.

The a-frame house maintains a minimalist alpine palette—concrete floors, timber-clad walls, and carefully placed skylights that follow the angles of the roof. The result is both grounded and uplifting: a retreat that honors the geometry of the land while embracing modern transparency and spatial clarity.

Images by Albrecht Schnabel

The post A-Frame Architecture Reimagined with Glass and Geometry appeared first on Homedit.

33 Shower Window Ideas For Natural Light And Views

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 05:53:39 +0000

A shower window is a disputable thing: on one hand, it provides a lot of natural light that is so precious for bathrooms, on the other hand, it doesn’t keep privacy in the space where it’s badly needed. Honestly, I never thought a shower window was a good idea—privacy, right? But after adding one during our bathroom update, I’m sold. That little window made the space feel brighter, bigger, and way less like a cave. Natural light in the morning makes a huge difference. No more flicking on a blinding overhead light just to shower. Plus, with a small frosted glass window, we get all the daylight without feeling exposed. Total game changer. Another bonus? Ventilation. Our old fan couldn’t keep up with steam, but now with a top-hinged awning window, moisture clears fast and I clean way less mold (thank goodness). Just make sure you seal it well—I skipped that step once and, well, soggy trim is not fun. If you’re redoing your bathroom, don’t overlook adding a window. It really does turn a basic shower into a more relaxing, spa-like spot. Clerestory And High Located Windows Your choice can be a clerestory window – this is a long and narrow window...

The post 33 Shower Window Ideas For Natural Light And Views appeared first on Shelterness.

Hilton CMO talks brand swagger, AI — and the pause that refreshed

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 20:08:16 +0000

The COVID years were an existential threat and reckoning for many in the hospitality and travel industry. But Hilton used it as an opportunity to reset.

At the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, I sat down with Hilton CMO Mark Weinstein to talk about how the brand’s current strong positioning and growth was forged in that crisis, how it strikes a balance between the inspiration of its past, and the technological possibility of the future, and more.

Subscribe to Fast Company Premium to watch the video interview on:

How Hilton found its “Just Do It”
Why Weinstein looked to founder Conrad Hilton to rediscover the company’s “swagger”
How Hilton deploys AI today—and how it’s preparing for an agentic AI world
Why Weinstein believes you have to give up some control of your brand story to creators, even if it means losing some of your narrative.

A Revolutionary Scoliosis Correction Device by Industrial Design Firm Intenxiv

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 18:53:40 +0000

This Spinamic is a scoliosis correction device by South Korean industrial design firm Intenxiv.

Designed for client VNTC, a South Korean medical technology company, Spinamic is soft rather than rigid, which brings several benefits. First off, it's adjustable. This allows doctors to tailor the pressure—which can literally be dialed in--to accommodate the patient's specific body and variant of scoliosis. "The compression intensity adjustment dial is an effective design that allows for fine-tuning," Intenxiv writes.

Also, 44% of people diagnosed with scoliosis are teenagers—meaning their bodies are still growing. Spinamic's adjustable design allows the brace to grow along with them. "By gathering data on growth factors and spinal conditions as well as x-ray images," explains VNTC, "hospitals and parents can check the patient's treatment progress" and make adjustments as necessary.

Secondly, the quick-drying mesh that Spinamic is made from is far more comfortable and breathable than a traditional thermoplastic brace. It can also be thrown into a washing machine, unlike plastic designs.

Thirdly, it's a lot quicker to manufacture. "A conventional rigid brace takes more than two weeks to manufacture," VNTC points out, while "Spinamic can be immediately customized and delivered based on clinical X-ray data."

Spinamic is currently available in South Korea. While VNTC has expressed the intention to distribute internationally, at press time it was not available for sale in the U.S.

A Popular European Smart Lock Comes to America

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:55:52 +0000

Designed in Austria, this stainless steel device is the Nuki Smart Lock. Since the company's formation a decade ago, they've shipped over 800,000 units—in Europe. Today the company is finally entering the U.S. market.

The company says it can be easily retrofitted without needing to drill anything. Once installed, you can unlock your door via smartphone app—hands-free; the company's app detects your proximity to the lock via Bluetooth and pops it as you approach. An internal brushless motor unlocks in 1.5 seconds, which sounds slow to me, but the company says it's faster than competing products.

Potenial UX hassle: The lock is powered by an internal lithium polymer batter, and while it will hold a charge for months (according to the company), you will need to periodically charge it. On the bottom of the knob is a little magnetic connection point that you attached the charging cable to. It takes two hours to top it up.

The Nuki Smart Lock runs $160, and should be available on Amazon by the time you read this.

No, Airlines are Not Installing These Stand-Up Saddle-Style Seats

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 14:51:16 +0000

Recently an Instagram post featuring these images went viral. The post falsely claimed that budget airlines would begin installing these saddle-style seats, which more or less place the passenger in a standing position, in an effort to cram more passengers in.

An online backlash formed, which is of course the point of releasing false information on the internet: Rile people up, steal eyeballs. But the truth is, these SkyRider seats are a concept from over a decade ago, have not been approved by regulatory bodies, are not in production, and no airline has ordered any.

The concept is by Italy's Aviointeriors, who recently released the following statement:

"The Skyrider, often mistaken for a finalized airline seat ready for takeoff, is in fact a conceptual prototype dating back to 2012. Designed as a bold response to one of the aviation industry's most pressing challenges, while maximizing space and ergonomics it was never meant to be taken at face value. Rather, it was a provocative exercise in design innovation, challenging the limits of what air travel might one day look like.

"Aviointeriors is well aware of today's market demands, bringing together quality, comfort, and the unmistakable touch of Made in Italy in every product it creates. For now, the Skyrider is not part of the official lineup."

The company then seems to hedge their bets:

"But who knows what the future of aviation may hold?"

In other words, We know these aren't cool...uh, unless you guys think they're cool?

I personally find the backlash ridiculous. Admittedly I'm biased; I have a bad back and would actually prefer to stand on short-haul flights. Also, if these do become a reality, it will likely be within a couple of budget rows at the back of the plane; if you don't like the seats, all you have to do is buy a ticket for a regular seat.

Anyways, here we have an odd case of a design concept going viral for the wrong reasons.

An Emergency Inflatable Buoy for Smartphones

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 14:51:15 +0000

In the '90s I visited a younger cousin in South Korea. Military service is mandatory there, and he was enlisted in the Navy. He had the craziest haircut I'd ever seen—completely shaved around the side, but with absurdly long bangs, like a front-mounted topknot. I asked him what that was about, and was stunned at the answer: "They can use it to pull you out of the water."

I found that crazy—and creative. A brutal piece of UX, essentially adding a design feature to sailors.

A company called Float Buddy does something similar for smartphones. Their eponymous product, designed for Boat Life people with butterfingers, is a clunky-looking device that attaches to your phone via a mounting disc that you permanently adhere to your phone's case.

If you drop your phone into the drink, a water-sensitive trigger inflates a red buoy, allowing you to locate and grab it.

Downside: The $60 device is, like an airbag, single-use.

Tripadvisor just turned its user reviews into a new brand with a whole lot to say

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Tripadvisor is hoping a brighter green and accompanying brand refresh will inspire more travelers to turn to the company for experiential vacation bookings.

The online travel company, which announced 1% year-over-year quarterly revenue growth in May, traded its almost-pharmaceutical turquoise green for a more vibrant electric lime as part of a brand refresh with creative agency Koto Studio. The company’s logo, an owl named Ollie, remains, but he’s now animated with moving eyes.

[Image: Tripadvisor]

The last time Tripadvisor launched a meaningful brand refresh was in 2020. The timing, of course, couldn’t have been worse.

“We have the new assets of that brand refresh for the first time in airports in April of 2020 [when] there’s like 18 people walking through the airport seeing this thing,” Matt Dacey, Tripadvisor’s chief marketing officer, recalls to Fast Company.

But five years later, it’s trying again—with new lessons about how people travel today.

The pandemic “fundamentally changed how people thought about travel,” Dacey says. Tripadvisor has seen a rise in bookings of vacations associated with sports and other events, with customers often speaking highly about tour guides they had on their trips. The emphasis on standout tour guides could mean that today’s travelers are looking for human connections and local experiences. Tripadvisor seeks to capture that sentiment by making user-generated content (UGC) central to its brand.

[Image: Tripadvisor]

Tripadvisor is also leaning into UGC for a new campaign. The assets are images like a selfie taken by a monkey or a shot of a kayak tipped in the water, and the result is creative storytelling from the point of view of the traveler, not the creative agency.

That makes strategic sense, considering how much consumers rely on reviews while planning their travels. In a 2019 TripAdvisor study, 72% of surveyed respondents said they always or frequently read reviews before making decisions about where to stay and eat or what to do while visiting a destination. “People trust people,” the report noted. Who better to tell a story than the person who was actually there?

“We just kept seeing image after image that people were actually putting on the platform that was far cooler than probably anything we could have come up with,” Dacey says.

Arthur Foliard, a brand designer and executive creative director for Koto, tells Fast Company that user-generated content also provided the inspiration for the brand’s refreshed and expansive secondary color palette. The agency used an internal tool to upload photos, pull out the three most important colors, then simplify those colors into flexible palettes that can be used for different travel locations and seasons.

[Image: Tripadvisor]

“We liked this idea that if you were in Tokyo during cherry blossom season, then you would have a completely different color, or the vibe of the brand would be very different than if you come here to New York right now,” Foliard says.

The brand refresh is just one outward sign of a larger company effort. Tripadvisor has refreshed its app, is fine-tuning its use of AI, and, Dacey says, will launch the largest global travel membership program in the world in the third quarter of 2025.

Lululemon claims Costco knocked off its designs. Online, the big-box retailer has already won

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 10:30:00 +0000

On June 27, Lululemon filed a lawsuit alleging that Costco has infringed on its copyright with several “knockoff” athleisure products. It’s just the latest chapter in a story of dupe design that’s plagued Lululemon for years.

According to documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Lululemon takes issue with a number of Costco products that it says are intended to mimic its popular designs, including the $128 Define jacket, the $118 Scuba oversize half-zip hoodie, and the $128 ABC trouser. The documents lay out an in-depth explanation for Lululemon’s identification of these “dupes,” pointing to details like the ornamental lines on the front of the Define jacket and the construction of the ABC pants’ back seam as examples of intellectual property copied by Costco in its own line of jackets and pants.

As details of the lawsuit emerge, the overwhelming majority of commenters on social media are landing firmly on Costco’s side of this debate. It seems that dupe design culture is becoming so normalized that many consumers view it as standard practice.

Lululemon and the rise of dupe culture

In recent years, dupe design culture has been taking over the way we shop. From makeup brand copycats to luxury furniture look-alikes and fragrance knockoffs, it’s likely that if you’ve been in the market for a higher-end product recently you’ve stumbled across a cheaper version of said product that seems suspiciously familiar.

For Lululemon, this cycle is turning into a tale as old as time. On TikTok, the hashtag #lululemondupe currently yields more than 11,000 videos; videos of affordable dupes of Lululemon products routinely garner hundreds of thousands of views.

Lululemon points to this trend in its suit against Costco. “There is even a hashtag ‘LululemonDupes’ on social media platforms such as TikTok that social media influencers use when promoting these copycat products,” the documents read. “The Infringing Products create an improper association with [Lululemon’s] authentic products.”

According to the U.S. Copyright Office, copyright infringement occurs “when a copyrighted work is reproduced, distributed, performed, publicly displayed, or made into a derivative work without the permission of the copyright owner.”

That can look different depending on the industry, but in the fashion world it generally protects patented clothing designs that are artistic rather than utilitarian in nature. For example, Lululemon argues in its lawsuit that the ornamental features of the Define jacket are “not essential to the function of the product,” meaning those features are not a “competitive necessity” for other companies’ apparel products, and therefore should belong to Lululemon alone.

This isn’t the first time Lululemon has stood up against alleged copycats. Back in 2021, the brand filed a lawsuit against Peloton—a former collaborator—arguing that the fitness company had stolen its women’s athleisure designs, a claim that was ultimately settled out of court in 2022. Lululemon then took a softer tack against dupes in 2023, when it hosted an event encouraging consumers with Lululemon dupes to trade them in for the real thing.

“It’s a trend we don’t see going away anytime soon. So we decided to actually lean in and embrace it, rather than pretend it’s not there,” Nikki Neuburger, Lululemon’s chief brand officer, told Fast Company at the time.

The internet sides with Costco

Now Lululemon is once again objecting to what it sees as infringing designs, but in the court of public opinion, it appears the brand has already lost.

On TikTok, one video from the user @thatssority explained Lululemon’s argument that Costco’s alleged infringing products might cause customer confusion. Per the actual legal filing, “Upon information and belief, some customers incorrectly believe these Infringing Products are authentic lululemon apparel while still other customers specifically purchase the Infringing Products because they are difficult to distinguish from authentic lululemon products.” (Potential customer confusion is often the basis for trademark infringement litigation as well.)

Several commenters took issue with Lululemon’s assertion that Costco’s products might be confused for theirs: “Not a single person has ever been confused about if they’re buying lulu or kirkland,” one comment with more than 30,000 likes reads. “Boycott lululemon because I don’t play about Costco,” another adds.

Explanatory TikToks from news sources like ABC 7 LA and CBS Mornings have garnered an influx of similar responses, with commenters largely expressing their frustration at Lululemon’s prices, pledging their support for Costco, and echoing the idea that no one would ever mistake Costco apparel for Lululemon.

While dupes have certainly been around for a while, it appears that the threshold for public acceptance of these products is getting lower—especially when the dupes are targeting a major corporation like Lululemon rather than a small business.

This chair costs $10,000—but it’s life-changing for people who need it

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 10:00:00 +0000

Janet Feldman spent 20 years working in footwear. As VP of her family’s business, she flew to Asia, supervised factory operations, and negotiated with suppliers. Then her father had a stroke, and her life took a twist.

All of his life, Feldman’s father had been staunchly independent. Now, he struggled to get get up from a chair without a helping hand. Feldman bought all of the lift recliners she could find on the market. These chairs were designed to help people transition between sitting and standing by tilting their entire bodies forward, but none of them fit the bill. Some were monstrously big. Others were plain ugly. Every single one of them reclined in such a way that her father slid out of it when he reclined. Then Feldman came to a resolve. “Finally, I said, you know what? I’ll make my own chair,” she recalls.

Feldman saw a gap in the market for a chair that performs better than any other lift chair—and looks good while doing it. “I wanted to have a beautiful chair that anybody would be proud to have in the living room. She left her family business, and in 2014, started her own company, called Assistance With Elegance.

Ten years, eight patents, and a pandemic later, she is now launching her company’s first product: the Awe chair. While other lift chairs push up from the floor, the Awe chair never leaves the ground. The only thing that lifts is the seat itself, which makes for a much more elegant experience. To prevent anyone from sliding out, the chair comes with an ingenious footrest that glides out as the chair reclines and scoops up your feet into place. It took 10 years to make, and two years to figure out the footrest alone. Its cost is $10,000.

A chair for the “silver tsunami”

When Feldman became her father’s caregiver, she noticed that people, including doctors, started to look at her instead of him. “Old people, they’re invisible,” she told me. “Nobody wants to look at old people because nobody wants to be old, and it’s sad to look at what we’re all going to be.”

It’s high time we started looking, because 73 million Americans, or one-quarter of the U.S. population today, is between 60 and 78 years old. By 2035, the Census Bureau estimates that older adults will outnumber American minors. The so-called “silver tsunami” is projected to fuel an economic boom: By 2050, people over 50 are projected to generate more than $28 trillion globally.

And yet, the elderly are still largely left out of design meetings. They’re seldom the target audience for new product launches.

Over the past few years, the tide has been turning, albeit slowly. Independent designers like Sarah Hossli and Lanzavecchia + Wai have each designed their own version of a chair that helps the elderly get up with dignity and grace. More broadly, Remsen makes pill containers that look like jewelry boxes. Boom Home Medical makes pastel-colored bedside urinals that look like flower vases. Can Go specializes in high-tech smart canes with GPS and activity tracking, an integrated flashlight, and cellular data for emergency phone calls.

The Awe chair sits within this ecosystem, and Feldman hopes to keep expanding the offerings. “We do realize that not everybody’s going to like a club chair. Some people might want much more modern designs,” she says. “It was so hard to do just this, that we figured we’d start really small and focused.”

From the dreamworld to reality

The look and feel of the Awe chair quite literally came to Feldman in a dream: “I wanted an old-style club chair that your grandfather would sit in,” she remembers. Brown, crinkly, straight from 1929, but with a modern take—and, of course, the technology to go with it.

The chair comes in two sizes and seven colors, including midnight blue, crimson red, and emerald green. For now, it is available directly to customers via the company’s website; the team is also hoping to partner with high-end assisted living facilities, airport lounges, and even golf clubs.

Feldman isn’t a designer, so she surrounded herself well. The chair was designed in collaboration with Jessica Banks, a robotics expert who runs a studio in Brooklyn, New York, that focuses on robotics and furniture design. It was engineered in Germany, with motors from China, and handcrafted in North Carolina, with leathers from Italy. Feldman declined to share how much it cost her to bring it to market, in part “because it’s still so shocking to me,” she says, noting she is now selling her house in West Hampton to replenish the coffers.

Earlier this month, I went out to the company’s offices in SoHo to try it out. As the seat gently lifted me, I thought of my grandfather, whose weakened arms could no longer push him up from his old armchair. As the chair gently lowered me back down, I thought of the thud he would make when he sat back down, letting gravity do the work his knees no longer could.

Of the four people who were at the office that day, three of them had experienced a similar moment with their parents or grandparents. “It’s such a common experience,” Feldman said.

Every other touchpoint was carefully thought through. The edges of the front of the armrests are slightly recessed, which provides an extra handgrip when getting up. A cupholder is built straight into the armrest. A side pocket lets you store glasses or a book. Of the chairs Feldman’s father tried, all had pockets that were too far down to reach. “We just raised the pocket,” she says. “All you have to do is look at how people use things.”

One of Feldman’s biggest pet peeves with other chairs was the lack of a footrest to stop people from sliding out—but adding one turned out to be more challenging than expected. Her team cycled through factories in Michigan and Florida that make airline chairs or theater chairs, but they couldn’t build the right mechanism. The German factory she ended up partnering with went bankrupt twice before resuming business. Finally, they found a way to coordinate the reclining flap and the footrest so that the footrest slides out until the two meet to form a “T.” A safety curtain at the bottom prevents small pets or children from crawling under.

These features are almost enough to make you forget about the sticker shock. At $10,000, the Awe chair is almost 10 times more expensive than the average lift recliner in the U.S., which is between $700 and $1,500. Feldman is sensitive to the price tag and hopes to follow through with a more affordable line that’s “maybe not made in Germany, maybe not using Italian leathers.”

She also knows that her target audience—retired boomers—has a lot more disposable income than the average working American. “I know it’s a very high price. But for now, we feel like it’s such a beautiful, special chair.”

China’s Luckin Coffee is the anti-Starbucks. Will it work in the U.S.?

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 10:00:00 +0000

China’s biggest coffee chain just opened stores in the U.S. for the first time. Its business model is the antithesis of Starbucks’s “back to basics” plan.

Luckin Coffee has dominated the java-slinging business in its home country, where it overtook Starbucks as the largest coffee chain both by total sales and number of locations back in 2023. Now it’s setting its sights on the U.S., with its first retail stores officially open in New York City.

Luckin’s rapid growth is a product of what it calls its “technology-driven retail model.” At most locations, the company operates without any cashiers, instead taking orders entirely through its popular mobile app—a strategy that prioritizes convenience and speed above all else. It’s a structure that’s almost the direct opposite of the new business model at Starbucks under CEO Brian Niccol, which emphasizes human interaction and personalized touches as a core part of the coffee-drinking experience.

[Photo: Luckin Coffee]

What is Luckin Coffee?

For American consumers, Luckin’s offerings are perhaps most comparable to those of Dutch Bros., covering a wide range of beverages, from specialty lattes and teas to refreshers, matcha, and a series of fruity Americanos. The prices are typically about 30% less than a Starbucks alternative. In a highly saturated American beverage market that’s constantly vying to identify the next Gen Z drink craze, Luckin’s menu isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel. However, its business model does represent a coffee shop experience that no American brand has yet to fully emulate.

According to an analysis by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Luckin Coffee’s founder, Jenny Qian, pulled inspiration for the shop’s retail model from popular ride-hailing services. Virtually all the company’s transactions are cashless, given that the entire ordering and payment process is handled through the brand’s app—similar to the way one might order an Uber or Lyft.

While American brands like Dunkin’, Dutch Bros., and Starbucks all have their own apps and mobile-ordering functions, none has made the plunge into a fully mobile-first strategy.

“We advocate a more convenient and rapid ‘new retail’ experience,” Luckin’s website reads. “Users can purchase, pick up and take out coffee through our mobile app, completely changing the traditional coffee business mode[l].”

Luckin’s simplified sales approach lent itself to an astronomical pace of growth. From January 2018 to March 2019, Wharton’s analysis notes, Qian and her team opened an average of 5.2 stores per day.

The brand’s success was significant enough that in May 2019 Luckin made its first play at a U.S. presence by filing for an initial public offering. Just a year later, though, a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation revealed that the company’s earning reports had been artificially inflated, causing Luckin to delist from the Nasdaq and fire Qian and six other executives involved in the scheme. In 2021, the company also filed for bankruptcy to recover from the $180 million in fines accrued during the legal proceedings.

Six years later, Luckin’s new leadership team has pulled off an impressive financial turnaround. Per Luckin’s first-quarter 2025 financial report, the brand now boasts more than 24,000 locations, primarily across China, Malaysia, and Singapore (Starbucks operates roughly 40,000 locations globally and about 8,000 in China). Luckin also notched $1.2 billion in net revenue during the three months ending on March 31—a 41.2% year-over-year increase. Meanwhile, Starbucks’s sales in the region have stalled, with same-store sales down 8% in fiscal year 2024.

Due to New York’s prohibition on cashless businesses, it’s likely that Luckin’s first two stores are operating under some combination of app and in-person orders. The brand did not immediately respond to Fast Company’s request for clarification on the stores’ operations, or whether Luckin plans to expand its mobile app model to other states in the U.S.

[Photo: Luckin Coffee]

Why Luckin Coffee is the anti-Starbucks

At the same time that Luckin is perfecting its efficiency-first, in-and-out structure, Starbucks is working on backtracking to its former glory as a human-centric third place.

Since Niccol took the helm at Starbucks back in September 2024, he’s been working to address the brand’s image problems—a result of higher costs, longer wait times, and waning sales—with a plan he calls “Back to Starbucks.” In an interview with Fast Company earlier this year, Niccol shared that he believed Starbucks had veered off course as a business during the mobile-ordering era of the pandemic. “I think it just really took a lot of the soul out of what this business is all about,” Niccol said.

To recapture Starbuck’s original “magic” as a sit-down coffeehouse, Niccol has been working on bringing back human touches like handwritten notes, warm, familiar ads, and a simplified menu that emphasizes coffee quality over beverage trend-chasing. So far, it’s clear that the turnaround won’t happen overnight: In April, Starbucks reported financial results that even Niccol called “disappointing,” with revenue and same-store sales falling below investor predictions.

While Starbucks de-emphasizes its mobile-ordering features, Luckin’s entire business model revolves around them. Even the two companies’ branding seems to underscore their opposing strategies: Starbucks embraces a warm aesthetic through its iconic dark green siren logo and color-graded advertising, while Luckin’s bright blue branding and stag logo feel more reminiscent of a tech company or bank than a coffee shop.

Luckin’s entrance into the American market is poised to offer a case study in whether Niccol’s thesis around the importance of the coffee shop as third place holds true. Or perhaps what consumers really care about is how quickly they can pick up their iced matcha.

This neighborhood in Queens has a brilliant plan to turn a busy street into a park

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 09:30:00 +0000

One of the most positive legacies of the COVID-19 pandemic stretches across 26 blocks in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens. The 34th Avenue Open Street emerged out of a New York City-sanctioned program in the early days of the pandemic that allowed neighborhood groups to temporarily close streets to car traffic and use the space for outdoor recreation and other purposes. In Jackson Heights, one of the early epicenters of the pandemic, the open street that emerged from this program became a kind of lifeline for the neighborhood. Now, after running strong for more than five years, a plan is taking shape to make the project on 34th Avenue, now known as Paseo Park, permanent.

Paseo Park Current Residential Block [Image: Alliance for Paseo Park]

The concept for the park was commissioned by the Alliance for Paseo Park, a volunteer group that has overseen the open street since the beginning, when it was little more than metal barriers at the end of each block. The group hired the architecture and urban design firm WXY to envision a more formal park space along the 1.3-mile length that includes a mix of recreational areas, seating and meandering zones, multiuse playspace for the 10 schools on and near the street, dense landscaping, paths for cyclists and pedestrians, as well as required emergency vehicle access areas. And because New York Mayor Eric Adams’s administration allocated $89 million in funding in 2022 to permanently build out the 34th Avenue Open Street, there’s a good chance this design concept will take shape. It could be a model for other neighborhoods in New York—and other cities—for how to thoughtfully turn streets into neighborhood amenities.

“There’s so many streets that are doing one thing, serving cars and parking,” says Rob Daurio, a senior associate and director of urban sustainability at WXY who led the 34th Avenue design project. “This is a big opportunity to really think ambitiously about how to provide more significant public space.”

Paseo Park Conceptual Residential Block [Image: Alliance for Paseo Park]

The need is acute. A report from New York City’s Independent Budget Office found that Jackson Heights has as little as two square feet of park space per resident. “It’s one of the lowest amounts of park space in the city,” says Daurio. The creation of the open street during the pandemic “did start to serve this really important and meaningful role for the community,” he says.

WXY worked directly with the Alliance for Paseo Park on deep community outreach to learn what neighbors and users of the space wanted from a permanent version of 34th Avenue’s open street. The main priority was to ensure that the linear park would be safe and pedestrian first, provide room for the schools in the area, and use its planting to combat the effects of climate change. WXY interpreted those priorities in a range of active, passive, and school-centric areas. “We tried to come up with not just one solution, but a range of different block typologies that really did respond to the needs of the individuals in those particular areas,” Daurio says.

The design concept is based on two main typologies that can define each of the 26 blocks in the park. WXY calls them the Super-Median and the Super-Sidewalk, and they essentially stretch out either the existing median in the street’s center or the sidewalks on its edges to create more usable public space. “Neither the sidewalk nor the median are big enough to actually take on a more significant use,” Daurio says. “But if you just widen them to enough space that you’re still allowing for your emergency access lanes and drive lanes, either of those options are viable to really create a more significant open space.”

These designs also balance the need for the street to remain a viable path for transportation—just not for most cars. In the years since 34th Avenue became an open street, it has become a highway for cyclists and, to the chagrin of some residents, delivery drivers on fast-moving electric bikes, mopeds, and other alternative forms of mobility. It’s particularly a problem for the youngest users of the space. According to a survey of children that was conducted by a local Girl Scout troop, 66% of children said that the thing they wanted most to change about the open street was for there to be fewer cars and mopeds on the street.

WXY integrated these concerns into their design by looking beyond the edges of 34th Avenue, proposing streetscape changes on another nearby arterial street, Northern Boulevard, which could be redesigned to handle more of the cross-neighborhood non-car traffic that has dominated 34th Avenue. “It’s a little bit of a Swiss Army knife of a street right now, where it’s a park, and it’s also a place for school drop-offs and a route for delivery people,” Daurio says. “We’re thinking about other opportunities to help take the burden off of 34th Avenue for doing everything.”

Luz Maria Mercado, board chair of the Alliance for Paseo Park, says people in the neighborhood are enthusiastic about the design concepts. “Our neighbors see their feedback represented in ideas like creating a front yard for the six public schools that line Paseo Park, the addition of green space, and the flexibility of different design types for different blocks with different needs,” she says.

Right now the design is still just a concept, and one that, despite official support from the Alliance for Paseo Park, is subject to input from the broader community. Claire Weisz, founding principal of WXY, says permanently closing any street to traffic, even one that’s had such a long and successful pilot stage, is going to be a challenge. “It’s not without its controversies, because, well, people love cars,” she says. This design concept is a hopeful wager that people will realize they love public space even more.

“We’re trying to do something that’s never been done before in New York City, but is being done around the world,” Mercado says. “It is hard, but it is not impossible.”

Kitchen Sink Drain Pipe Size: A Guide to Perfect Fit

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 09:15:12 +0000

Learn about the right kitchen sink drain pipe size to ensure smooth drainage and avoid plumbing headaches. Got a leaky sink? Or perhaps you’re embarking ...

The post Kitchen Sink Drain Pipe Size: A Guide to Perfect Fit appeared first on Industry Standard Design.

Modern Jungle Retreat: Ligar Bay Bach House by Young Architects

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 08:00:10 +0000

Perched on the steep coastline of Ligar Bay, New Zealand, the Ligar Bay Bach House by Young Architects redefines the contemporary holiday retreat. This 163 m² residence merges bold structural clarity with raw material honesty, standing confidently against a dense backdrop of native greenery while overlooking the pristine bay below.

The house unfolds as a sequence of elevated pavilions that follow the slope of the land, with generous glazing that frames panoramic coastal views. The upper modules—private bedroom pods—are set apart and connected by exposed walkways, evoking the feel of a luxury treehouse. Concrete, timber, and steel are left exposed, showcasing their textures and forming a palette that feels grounded yet light. Inside, the natural timber cabinetry and oversized woven pendants lend a warm, tactile dimension to the open kitchen and dining area.

What makes this project distinctive is not just its architecture, but the experience it curates. Access to the different levels mimics a trail through nature—with stone steps, gabions, and rope handrails guiding the journey. Passive cooling strategies like breezeways and chimney skylights reduce environmental impact, while the layout allows for flexible use and future expansion. It’s a home designed for pause, for play, and for total immersion in the land around it.

Photographs:Jason Mann Photography

The post Modern Jungle Retreat: Ligar Bay Bach House by Young Architects appeared first on Homedit.

Figma files to go public on the NYSE as ‘FIG’

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 21:07:47 +0000

The collaborative design tool Figma continues its march toward going public in one of the most highly anticipated IPOs in the history of design software.

Wasting no time licking its wounds after European regulators blocked its $20 million acquisition by Adobe in late 2023, Figma quietly filed its S-1 paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in April. Now, it’s announced that the S-1 has been made available to the public.

That S-1, which you can read here, is full of interesting tidbits, as private companies disclose financial information for the first time.

The biggest news? Figma disclosed making $749 million in revenue in 2024—with a (non-GAAP) profit margin of around 17% (a figure that looks at profits pre-taxes and some other expenditures). Its revenue was up 48% from 2023, signaling that Figma’s growth is quite strong.

With revenue in hand, we can see that Figma is about 1/28th the size of Adobe, or about a third of the size of Canva (on a balance sheet, at least). Meanwhile, Figma’s install numbers are confident. The company claims 13 million people use its products monthly. And 95% of Fortune 500 businesses use the software. Surprisingly, two-thirds of its users are not designers.

Figma’s public debut date and share pricing have yet to be determined, but the company will go by the very cute NYSE symbol “FIG.”

A Smart Design for a Robotic Tennis Partner

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 16:52:27 +0000

Here's an example of solving a complex problem by synthesizing existing technologies in a novel way.

A Chinese inventor known only as Mr. Feng wanted to create a robot that could persistently return tennis volleys, allowing him to practice his sport without needing to line up a human partner. While humanoid robots have made sharp advances in China, none are up to the complicated task of playing tennis.

What Feng realized is that you don't need a humanoid robot; you just need a robot that can simulate the inputs and outputs of a human partner. He subsequently created this Acemate Tennis Robot, a rolling box that can track struck balls using a pair of cameras, and reach them anywhere on the court thanks to mecanum wheels.

It catches the balls within its net, then fires a new ball back towards the player. By dialing in the timing of when it catches a ball and when it fires one, the effect is as if you're playing with a human.

It's an understatement to say backers went wild for the idea. The Acemate has been successfully Kickstarted with over $2.1 million in pledges at press time, with 4 days left to pledge.

Outdoor Seating You’d Actually Want to Visit: Where Nature Is Wrapped in a Whimsical Birdcage

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 16:41:37 +0000

When EDC Objects are Actually Designed by Industrial Designers

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 15:44:46 +0000

Most EDC stuff looks and feels like it was designed by an engineer or machinist. In contrast these objects by the James Brand, which was notably founded by an industrial designer (Ryan Coulter), were clearly created by folks with ID backgrounds.

The anodized aluminum Warrick as a bit-holding screwdriver. Its sleek shape was designed both to slide into a coin pocket and to provide leverage. And the included bits aren't throwaway filler; those are Wiha bits.

The Mehlville is a two-compartment carabiner. They're milled out of single blocks of aluminum or titanium and feature stainless steel fittings.

The Palmer is a simple, minimalist aluminum utility knife. There's a hole for a lanyard and, like the Warrick, it will also fit into a coin pocket.

The Palmer's elegantly-designed blade changing process is particularly brilliant, and features a patented mechanism. Here's how it works:

I'm not much of an EDC guy, but all of these caught my eye. You can really tell when an industrial designer or team has spent a lot of time sweating every radii, chamfer and transition. And while it might seem like a small detail, the UX of the blade changes on the Palmer reminds me of the good that can come when industrial designers give a damn.